Page 114 of Just One Look

Bomb Detonated

Luka had slept toomuch today, and now, he couldn’t. He had the cricket on, but he wasn’t watching it.

He could always sleep. Anywhere, anytime. You had to, when you traveled amongst as many time zones as he did, as often as he did. Sleeplessness wasn’t often a problem anyway when you worked your body to exhaustion for a living.

He couldn’t sleep now, though. It was the inactivity, or it was the drugs. Some people got addicted to opioids. He always just wanted to stop taking them.

Six months,his brain told him, doing its best to sound the alarm.Six months. And you’re thirty-three.

You’ve had a good run,he told his brain.Stop whinging. Bloody soft.

It wasn’t just the work, and it wasn’t the money. He was all right, and he’d keep being all right, because his tastes still ran more to beer than Champagne, and he’d put a fair bit away. So, no, it wasn’t the money. It wasn’t even the status. It was being alone.

He was a solitary sort of man, but he wasn’t used to feeling alone. He’d had his team, always. The thought of that falling away from him, leaving him behind, of not being a teammate anymore, just another ex-player …

He turned up the volume on his headphones.

The curtain rattled softly, and he looked up with relief. He could use the distraction.

It was Elizabeth. In her black trousers and white shirt, still, at … at eleven o’clock at night, or close enough. No makeup, and her hair wasn’t as neat as it had been this afternoon, either.

She looked like exactly what he wanted to see, and he yanked off his headphones.

“Back from Waiheke?” he asked, keeping his voice down.

“Yes.” She hesitated, then said, “If I get a wheelchair, would you come out into the corridor with me?”

“I don’t need a wheelchair,” he said, swinging himself carefully out of bed and feeling about a thousand percent better. “Let’s walk.”

She held his arm, and he said, when they were out the door and away from his sleeping roommates, “You realize I’m holding the IV stand. Supported, if I needed it. Which I don’t. It was a simple fusion.”

“Intravenous opioids,” she said.

“Nah. Made them take me off the drip. One pain tablet, that’s all. Tomorrow night, I’ll start weaning off that.”

“It’ll hurt,” she said, after taking her hand away. Hastily, he’d call that.

“Trust me,” he said, “being drugged hurts more. Grab my arm again anyway, would you? What was I thinking? I liked that. What’s my mate Webster going to think about you visiting me? You’ve clearly not been home tonight. Is he going to be jealous?”And you’ve got to be tired,he didnotsay. If he mentioned that, she’d think he was criticizing her for working too much.

A long pause, during which she didnotgrab his arm again, and he said, “Joke.” They’d reached the corner now, and were headed down the short leg of the track he’d lapped a dozen times already today.

She said, “I can’t …” The word hitched in her throat. “I can’t feel guilty about anything else tonight. I know I should. I know it. But I can’t.”

Ah. He’d been right. “Hang on.” He steered her into the little waiting area at the end of the floor, next to the lifts. It was deserted this late, other than a half-finished jigsaw puzzle of puppies, and he said, “Sit down and tell me.”

This was why she’d come. Something had hurt her, and she’d come for comfort. That hard shell cracking just a bit, like a chicken’s egg with that little beak starting to work. Making a tiny hole, barely enough to notice, then making it bigger.

It could take a while for that chick to peck its way out.

She didn’t tear up. She straightened her shoulders instead like the soldier she was and said, “How do I count the disastrousness? OK, first? I came back to Auckland on a helicopter.” Now, she was starting to laugh. Helplessly. “You should haveseenme, trying to be blasé about it. I’ve only ever been on a helicopter for an organ harvest! As a young resident, obviously, because you don’t harvest brains. I swear, this was more stressful. I was climbing in there after this sort of tidal wave of emotion, trying to focus on the experience and not think about the gigantic detonation I’d just caused. Lauren’s new husband has a helipad, though, and I strongly suspect that he’s the richest person I’ve ever met.Notwhat I was expecting. Also, he’s incredibly kind. Laurensofell upward from my dad. He’s older than she is, butImight want to marry him. Totally comforting. Shelter from the storm. A little bit like you.”

She tossed that out as if she didn’t realize what she’d said, and he tucked it away to examine later and asked, “What’s his name?”

“Angus MacDonald.”

He whistled softly. “As in MacDonald Industries?”

“I don’t know. Roadbuilding, Lauren said.”